Tom Butler-Bowdon’s latest work Never Too Late to be Great will be out in March and I am sure it will be an excellent read.

Tom Butler-Bowdon gave me permission to add his press release here for Never Too Late to be Great.

NEVER TOO LATE to be GREAT

by TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

Published by Virgin Press on 22nd March 2012, £11.99 tpbk and £12.52 ebook

It’s never too late to begin the journey of being or doing something remarkable.

Never Too Late to be Great is about the power of thinking long. Exposing the myth of ‘overnight’ success, personal development authority Tom Butler-Bowdon shows us that contrary to popular belief, people, companies, products and ideas invariably need a long time to realise their potential.

Highlighting the importance of the ‘ten-year rule’ as referred to in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which suggests that significant achievements rarely happen without a decade of intense work and practice in any given area, Never Too Late to be Great offers inspiration for the impatient or disheartened to stay the course, and gives reassurance to us all that, given the longer life spans most of us enjoy now, we have more time than we think to achieve our goals.

Written in the tradition of classic motivational literature, Never Too Late to be Great provides readers with the facts and inspiration necessary to help them banish the excuses that prevent them from achieving everything they want in life. It will appeal to adults at all stages, from people in their twenties, frustrated with the pace of their career progress, to people facing their mid-life or redundancy and looking for a change of career.

Tom Butler-Bowdon is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Sydney. He left his job as a political advisor to write the bestselling 50 Self-Help Classics – a guide to personal development literature. This was followed by other titles in the series: 50 Success Classics, 50 Spiritual Classics, 50 Psychology Classics and 50 Prosperity Classics. This successful series is now published in 22 languages. Tom has appeared on numerous television and radio shows in the UK, US and Australia.

Tom Butler-Bowdon is available for interview. For more information, press copies or extracts please contact Kasi Collins in the Virgin Books press office on kcollins@eburypublishing.co.uk or 02078408373

New Year’s Day should be called Amateur Goal Setting Day because although a goal and a New Year’s Resolution would in theory appear to be very similar, the results of the two are entirely different. Very famously, New Year Resolutions are rarely achieved. In fact most people forget them within a few days of setting them, only a small number of New Year Resolutions will outlast January, but saying that someone somewhere must successfully set and achieve their New Year Resolutions year upon year, but I certainly have never met that person.

If you would look up the word resolution in a dictionary you would find it to be a strong, powerful word, which means that you are seriously planning with resolve to do something. ‘Resolve’ or ‘resolution’ are words that mean business on any other day of the year, but on New Year’s Day these words appear to lose all their power and meaning, why is this? It is because of the many distractions we all face each day. Our minds can only truly give full attention to one thought at a time, although we may be aware of the next thought trying to get that top spot in our minds. In the average day countless distractions will compete for your attention and most of these distractions would like your full attention. Think of it this way; the distractions of the day will take your dreams away unless you have total focus that only goals can offer.

Set goals not resolutions, that is the best way to reach a result of your choosing. Why not this year turn your New Year’s Resolution into a goal instead? On my website, in my book and on my training courses I talk and write about goal attraction. Goal attraction is the ability to return your mind back to your goals, despite all of the distractions of the day. Good goal setting offers many different forms of goal attraction, for example; affirmations, meditation and visual prompts, all of which work well on their own or any mixture of goal attraction methods together. Why do we need to be able to return our minds back to our chosen goal? Because if one thing is true of the human condition, it’s this; “we will become what we think about”. Countless quotes all through history from philosophers, gurus, great thinkers and people with a wealth of life experience can be quoted as saying “we will become what we think about” or words to that effect. New Year Resolutions will slip from the mind, but goals that also make good use of goal attraction methods, together with a positive ‘can do’ attitude, will lead to you achieving results.

I have some good news for you, next time you ask of yourself “When will my ship come in?” The good news is that, your ship has been here all along. Everything that you need in order to reach your chosen success has been close to hand all along. When your mind becomes totally focused on a chosen goal, you will then see everything that you will need for your journey and the path ahead of you will open up.

As Russ Conwell the author of ‘Acres of Diamonds’, put it –

“Many of us spend our whole lives searching for success when it is usually so close that we can reach out and touch it”

If you want 2012 to be different for you from the years before it, set carefully chosen goals, be a truly positive person, move outside your comfort zone, take action, believe that nothing can stop you from reaching your goal, read the books, go on the seminars and courses, then use goal attraction and make it all happen for you in 2012.

Do not let it be yet another Amateur Goal Setting Day this year, if you really do want something, set a goal instead and not a News Years Resolution.